May 30, 2011; Source: Wired.com | A group of hackers that calls itself Lulzsec has assaulted PBS online by cracking its servers, posting thousands of secret passwords, and placing a story on the PBS Newshour blog that announced Tupac Shakur, a well-known rapper who died in 1996, was alive and well.

Sparking the incident was Frontline’s airing of a documentary called “WikiSecrets” about WikiLeaks, its founder Julian Assange, and imprisoned leaker Bradley Manning. Neither Assange nor Lulzsec were pleased with the portrayals in the documentary. Assange asserted that PBS was attempting to help build an espionage case against him and Manning.

Exhibiting that it has no particular grudge against public broadcasting, Lulzsec recently hacked into Fox.com, “where the group stole and posted 363 employee passwords, the names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses of 73,000 people who had signed up for audition information for the upcoming Fox talent show The X-Factor.”

Any reactions on what one commentator calls a new form of nonviolent protest?—Ruth McCambridge